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Plenty of private companies, states and municipalities have negotiated pensions that are fully funded and are sustainable. They have benefits that are just as generous (in some cases more generous) than any of the ones in Illinois. The difference is - they funded them. Pensions in Illinois were underfunded for years, Dawn Clark Netsch ran for Governor in 1994 on a platform that included fully funding Illinois pensions. This has been a case of criminal neglect for decades.
When a state or municipality agrees to benefits they need to set the money aside for them. To not do that, and then 20 years later start complaining about the "generous" benefits that were promised is a load of bull. Politicians did not want to raise taxes to pay for salary increases, so they kicked the can down the road by promising future benefits instead. They then failed to invest the money needed to pay for those benefits.
A .025% income tax increase in the early 90's set aside for paying pensions would have prevented this whole mess. It wasn't done, and the money wasn't set aside. While I agree that work needs to be done to address pension abuses (as every state needs to do) the problem does not come from crazy benefits, it comes from failing to set the money aside to pay for those benefits when the bill comes due.
What about the CTA? You hear so much about ''deferred maintainence'' to fund pensions while the system crumbles...what's the deal with its pensions, if you know.
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The fact is that despite the best efforts of crazies in Wisconsin to recall state legislators that sided with their reform minded governor and a mad plan to stack their state supreme court, the forces of organized labor were unable to get the mass of regular voters to go along with their crazy schemes.
Crazies, huh? If 400 families in this nation have as much wealth as 150 million Americans, how can they be the ones that are crazy.
Do you realize or even care how much the protests in Madison were supported by the Koch Brothers? Scott Walker gladly takes their money. You're so-called "reform minded governor" is a force of pure regression. Ohioans who support labor just registered their point very clearly against a similiar governor in Ohio in last week's election.
chet, again, I'm not sure what planet you live on. what you don't realize and never will is that the inequality of income in this nation has ripped the place apart. the so called "crazies" in Madison and the folks occupying Wall Street are the last lines of defense that can protect us from the form of revolution that will destroy all of our lives, yours included.
We are living under a cancerous system, capitalism on steroids, no longer based on competition but on a partnership between government and corporation.
The social problems generated by the inequality of income, the one sure killer of any notion of democracy, are such that the system cannot stand.
you are probably one of those sitting around waiting for the economy to "turn around". It won't. we're doing nothing to make it happen. indeed, the games played in Washington only make the matter worse. The real "crazies" are the ones who keep on pushing supply-and-demand on a depleted planet, who concentrate wealth in the hands of the few and who are destroying the nation. What they are doing is unsustainable. You will soon be the very beneficiary of what they so sadly have created. No pleasure in saying that though, Chet; so will I.
You rail on the unions when all the power is in the hands of management, unlike any time in our history. You rail on cities like Chicago due to their corruption but fail to realize how irrelevant that corruption is when our national government is so filled with it and it has become so pervasive across society.
how do you and I differ? It's not that I know more than you. But, I believe, it is because I am very much in tune to the plight faced by so many of my fellow Americans. You, by your words, don't give any indication that you even know these people exist.
You've hitched your horse to the powers-that-be, chet, and your arguments are purely finding fault with the people, not the ones who rule over them and destroy their lives. You're living inside a bubble, my man.
Round and round and round we go, Chet. So let me ask you one question, point blank, that might totally crystalize this conversation:
Do you believe a nation in which 400 families have the same amount of wealth as half the population of that nation, some 150 million people, is just and fair....and has any chance of survival as long as those types of inequity are in place??????????????
The ties you claim exist between "corporations and government" are they the ones that allowed GM to reconstitute itself to save UAW perks? The Obama Motor Co. - WSJ.com
If the "occupy" forces are the last line of defense then why are there more jobs being created in Wisconsin than in Illinois? Wisconsin’s New Jobs Account for More than Half of Nation (http://maciverinstitute.com/2011/07/wisconsin-job-gains-account-for-more-than-half-of-nation’s-net-numbers-for-june/ - broken link)
Cast your lot with the ignoramuses that would rather fight over their drum circles than get jobs then ask me a serious question: n+1: Monday Night Urgent OWS Message
i want to go back to chet's observations here because they are too important and too disturbing to ignore.
all aspects of any society are subject to corruption, so corruption cannot be the yard sticks we use to measure their worth. what is the norm in any society is that the degree of corruption is spread fairly evenly across all its institutions. the flaw is in how we carry things out.
do chet's "diamond cufflink wearing union bosses" exist. Probably. but in many unions, you won't find them. And even if you do, they are making a pitenance of what the other side, management is making. Those are the guys who really live like kings. But if you want straw men, union bosses are there, just like those illegal Mexican immigrants (who work their asses off for jobs Americans won't take and who are encouraged by the very right wing forces of regression that seek their back breaking/low pay labor.)
Chet seems to forget that the very businesses that left heavily unionized northern states for the "right to work" paradises of the Sun Belt only made a temporary encampment in those states. When the masters-of-the-universe (American style) realized that labor was even cheaper in Mexico than in the US, it was good bye to Dixie. And soon, good bye to Mexico as there were far more third world conditions overseas. What a sick, sick, predatory mess.
you suggest that labor unions are bad for business. I disagree. About 180° removed from you. Labor unions raising the pay of laborers is a case of a rising tide raising all ships. The US economy was never as strong as in the 1950s when the real benefits of the New Deal kicked in so well with high wages and money in the pocket to spend. This was the period when the US thrived like no other.
Low taxes and union busting is good for business only in the sense that it hurts everything else around it. Low taxes produces a society without good education, working infrastructure, police and fire protection that works, health benefits that keep a society functioning well.
remove those and keep labor costs low you have a hell-on-earth and the corporations lose on the basis that the public has no money to spend. As in 2011 when this should be so obvious.
The economy does not exist for the richest among us. The economy is all of ours. If we want to slash wages to the degree that Chet suggests, than we will be living with a standard of living that our competitors have...the China's and India's of the world, the very economic structure our oligarchs wish for us.
Is Chet or are you worried about "being competitive" with those serfs that will work for less money than even our American serfs do? Fine. Get out of trade agreements like NAFTA. And protect our industries. Put the type of tarriffs on incoming products from China and the rest of the far east, the same type that they put on ours. Those tariffs in place means that our products would be as competitive as the ones from overseas, benefiting everybody since the fruit of the labor will circulate in the US economy, not one overseas. And tax the wealthiest among us; with those taxes, so many of the problems we face could be solved. No nation can expect to thrive with the income disparity of the United States, arguably the worse of any developed nation (short of Britain which sadly seems to mirror us today).
You can't build an economy on service jobs and that's where we are at today. We've exported our manufacturing jobs overseas because we can't compete with the tragic little that overseas' workers get for their labor. In some case, virtually slave labor. Truthfully you can't shop at WalMart and say you are against slavery. One service field, finance, went from around 7% of our economy to close to 40%. Finanace became the field of choice for those who wanted to get rich (and do it quick). Even our universities emphasised their b schools over all other fields, fields that enrich our economy and quality of life in a way that finanace does not. Finance does not produce a thing, it only shifts resources. When that shift is done rationally, money is in the right place for development. But that isn't what is happening today. Today finanace is little more than a casino.
We are living today off the remnants of society that once took bettering itself very seriously and took an adult approach to taxation. It built a magnificent infrastructure (which today falls apart) and an educational system that fueled the growth of American ingenuity. We took its benefits and failed to pass it on to the next generations.
any society that fails to invest in the commons, the things that we share is doomed. We are all in this together and those on top are crashing the system, a system that took great effort from so many people over the centuries to create.
We are all in this together. And without practical, pragmatic solutions that avoid the doctrinaire nature of all the -isms....capitalism, communism, socialism, etc......we cause our doom.
with the issues facing us, we no longer have the "luxury" of not being on the "same side".
This might be the best post I have ever seen on C-D. Thanks for all you add to the discussion!
May I add this comment from Edsg25 The economy does not exist for the richest among us. The economy is all of ours. If we want to slash wages to the degree that Chet suggests, than we will be living with a standard of living that our competitors have...the China's and India's of the world, the very economic structure our oligarchs wish for us.
Who would wish upon anyone in America the standard of living that China provides?
May I add this comment from Edsg25 The economy does not exist for the richest among us. The economy is all of ours. If we want to slash wages to the degree that Chet suggests, than we will be living with a standard of living that our competitors have...the China's and India's of the world, the very economic structure our oligarchs wish for us.
Who would wish upon anyone in America the standard of living that China provides?
Your comment above holds truth.
with people like you and aragx here, i'm glad to be having a discussion.
This discussion, particularly your comment about the standard of living here vs. in China, made me think of this Atlantic piece I just read about Chinese immigrants going back to China for a better life. Frankly, it's a trend piece without a ton of supporting data, but it's an interesting read nonetheless.
Quote:
"In China, people live more comfortably: in a big house, with a good job. Life is definitely better there."
The ties you claim exist between "corporations and government" are they the ones that allowed GM to reconstitute itself to save UAW perks? The Obama Motor Co. - WSJ.com
If the "occupy" forces are the last line of defense then why are there more jobs being created in Wisconsin than in Illinois? Wisconsin’s New Jobs Account for More than Half of Nation (http://maciverinstitute.com/2011/07/wisconsin-job-gains-account-for-more-than-half-of-nation%E2%80%99s-net-numbers-for-june/ - broken link)
Cast your lot with the ignoramuses that would rather fight over their drum circles than get jobs then ask me a serious question: n+1: Monday Night Urgent OWS Message
ok, chet, i'm nothing if not persistent. let's forget about the ignoramuses and see what you think. so i'll ask again:
(1) can a nation where the richest 400 families have the wealth equivalent to have the population (the lower 150,000,000 of us) be a healthy, democratic, functioning society of one, if it does not correct this inequitity is likely to crash and burn?
and let me pose a second question:
(2) who do you think is more responsible for the bursting of the housing bubble: those people who took out mortages or the banks who gave them to them? who do you think is more responsible for the problems of the nation today: management of large Wcorporations or union leadership that oversteps its bound?Who creates a bigger problem: illegal immigrants or the corporations that put them to work hiding their lack of documentation of the individuals who hire them to do the work at home also without documentation?
chet, there are things wrong in all aspects of our society. Including unions (i.e. the insane ones in Chicago who price McCPl virtually out of business by nickle and diming every convention that comes to town) and there are home buyers who have been extremely irresponsible.
But it the powers that be that IMHO have been the real problem in each case up above. what do you think, Chet?
... or putting it another way (and stealing a FB post I saw), is it more likely that American has 150,000,000 lazy people who won't work, or that we have 400 folks who have benefited from a system out of proportion (drastically so IMO) to their contributions to it?
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